Electronic Instrumentation Laboratory
Department of Microelectronics

MSc I. Bellouki

PhD student
Electronic Instrumentation (EI), Department of Microelectronics

Themes: Smart Ultrasound

Biography

Imad was born in Arnhem, the Netherlands, in 1999. He earned his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology in 2021, followed by an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Microelectronics, which he completed in 2023. For his M.Sc. thesis, Imad developed a programmable energy-recycling resonant pulser for miniature wearable ultrasound applications.

In 2025, he was awarded the NWO Mosaic 2.0 research grant for his research proposal titled SUMMIT: Smart Ultrasound Monitoring through Miniaturized Integrated-Circuit Technology.

Imad is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the Electronic Instrumentation Laboratory at Delft University of Technology. As part of the SUMMIT project, he is researching ASIC design for wearable ultrasound imaging devices targeting cardiovascular monitoring.

Publications

  1. An Amplitude-Programmable Energy-Recycling High-Voltage Resonant Pulser for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    Bellouki, Imad; Rozsa, Nuriel N. M.; Chang, Zu-Yao; Chen, Zhao; Tan, Mingliang; Pertijs, Michiel A. P.;
    IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits,
    Volume 60, Issue 6, pp. 2048--2059, June 2025. DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2024.3494536
    Abstract: ... This article presents an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for battery-powered ultrasound (US) devices. The ASIC implements a novel energy-efficient high-voltage (HV) pulser that generates HV transmit (TX) pulses directly from a low-voltage (LV) battery supply. By means of a single off-chip inductor, energy is supplied to a US transducer in a resonant fashion, directly generating half-period sinusoidal HV pulses on the transducer, while consuming substantially less energy than a conventional class-D pulser. By recycling residual reactive energy from the transducer back to the input, the energy consumption is further reduced by more than 50%. The autocalibration techniques are leveraged to deal with tolerances of the inductor, transducer, and battery supply and thus maximize the energy efficiency. A prototype chip was fabricated in TSMC 0.18-μm HV BCD technology and used to drive external 120pF capacitive micromachined US transducers (CMUTs) with a center frequency of approximately 2.5 MHz. Electrical measurements show that the prototype can generate pulses with a peak amplitude between 10 and 30 V accurate to within ±1 V. Acoustic measurements demonstrate successful ultrasonic pulse transmission and pulse-echo measurements. The prototype reaches a peak efficiency of 0.23 fCV2, which is the highest reported to date for HV pulsers targeting US imaging.

  2. A Resonant High-Voltage Pulser for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    I. Bellouki; N. Rozsa; Z.-Y. Chang; Z. Chen; M. Tan; M. Pertijs;
    In Dig. Techn. Papers IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC),
    February 2024. DOI: 10.1109/ISSCC49657.2024.10454286

  3. An ASIC for Efficient Generation of High-Voltage Transmit Pulses for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    Imad Bellouki; Nuriel Rozsa; Zu-Yao Chang; Zhao Chen; Mingliang Tan; Michiel Pertijs;
    In Annual Workshop on Circuits, Systems and Signal Processing (ProRISC),
    July 2024.

  4. An ASIC for Efficient Generation of High-Voltage Transmit Pulses for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    I. Bellouki; N. Rozsa; Z. Y. Chang; Z. Chen; M. Tan; M. A. P. Pertijs;
    In Proc. IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS),
    IEEE, September 2024. abstract.

  5. Electrical Pulser for a Load Having a Capacitance
    M.A.P. Pertijs; Z. Chen; M. Tan; I. Bellouki;
    Patent, Dutch 2035728, September 2023.

BibTeX support

Last updated: 3 Dec 2025

Imad Bellouki